There's Nobody Who Doesn't Have Problems With

This Kingdom Of God Life Is Not A Matter Of Waking Up Each Morning With A List Of Chores Or An Agenda To Be Tended To, Left On Our Bedside Table By The Holy Spirit For Us While We Slept. We Wake Up Already Immersed In A Large Story Of Creation And Covenant, Of Israel And Jesus, The Story Of Jesus And The Stories That Jesus Told. We Let Ourselves Be Formed By These Formative Stories, And Especially As We Listen To The Stories That Jesus Tells, Get A Feel For The Way He Does It, The Way He Talks, The Way He Treats People, The Jesus Way.

That's The Whole Spiritual Life. It's Learning How To Die. And As You Learn How To Die, You Start Losing All Your Illusions, And You Start Being Capable Now Of True Intimacy And Love.

Jesus Almost Never Talked In Terms Of Explaining. He Was Always Using Enigmatic Stories And Difficult Metaphors. He Was Always Pulling People Into Some Kind Of Participation.

Repentance Is A Realization That What God Wants From You And What You Want From God Are Not Going To Be Achieved By Doing The Same Old Things, Thinking The Same Old Thoughts. Repentance Is A Decision To Follow Jesus Christ And Become His Pilgrim In The Path Of Peace. Repentance Is The Most Practical Of All Words And The Most Practical Of All Acts. It Is A Feet-on-the-ground-kind-of-word. It Puts A Person In Touch With The Reality That God Creates.

Every Call To Worship Is A Call Into The Real World.... I Encounter Such Constant And Widespread Lying About Reality Each Day And Meet With Such Skilled And Systematic Distortion Of The Truth That I'm Always In Danger Of Losing My Grip On Reality. The Reality, Of Course, Is That God Is Sovereign And Christ Is Savior. The Reality Is That Prayer Is My Mother Tongue And The Eucharist My Basic Food. The Reality Is That Baptism, Not Myers-briggs, Defines Who I Am.